


Wanderlust

by andreaphobia



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Friendship, Growing Up, Love, M/M, Wanderlust, roadtrip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:58:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hibari and Yamamoto on a roadtrip to nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderlust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kneesdrawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kneesdrawn/gifts).



> Originally archived on LJ. Edited some since the first time.

_not all those who wander_  
are lost.  
\- j. r. r. tolkien

 

i am driving my dad’s old ford pickup truck across the state in record temperatures; the hottest i can remember since the year that the lake dried up when i was eight. the passenger’s side window is cracked open, and the air that swirls in is dry with electricity, like licking the tip of a battery to catch the spark on your tongue. weather forecast’s a summer storm; it’s weird how it can be so damn hot and threaten to yet rain at the same time. the road stretches straight ahead, far as the eye can see, to a tiny point on the horizon; my palms are cemented to the bakelite steering wheel with a thin film of perspiration. i hear the wheels grinding, turning, scraping a mirage of heat off the asphalt. beside me sits hibari, glued to the leather seat by the back of his sweat-drenched t-shirt. he reaches out, pulls a map out of the glove compartment from under faded travel brochures and an envelope full of gas money, unfurls it across his lap, and traces our route with the tip of his finger, spanning hundreds of miles in a moment. there’s jazz on the radio, old jazz, and i don’t even like jazz but it’s what hibari wants to listen to, ella fitzgerald crooning ‘blue skies’ while we drive straight into mountains laced with clouds dark as pitch. if he was more like me he’d tap his foot to the music, maybe even sing along, but instead he stares out the window watching the telephone poles rush by like they’ve got someplace to be.

hibari used to smoke camel menthols, but he’s quitting cold turkey. it’s bad of me but i kind of miss the smell that would cling to his hair, and the way the inside of his cheek used to taste like tobacco leaf. sometimes to pass the time he tells me stories as we drive, new stories and old ones, ones where i know how the story ends but i listen anyway for the retelling of it. eighteen years old with a driver’s license made me invincible, and i stole my dad’s car keys and drove us down to the lake in the middle of the night. we shed our clothes on the shore where an empty whisky bottle was half-buried in the sand and went skinny-dipping on a whim. he recounts how we wrestled and kissed on the dock; it creaked reprovingly every time he flipped me on my back, forever the smaller yet stronger. this went on for an hour until he somehow got one sand-smeared foot over my throat and with this little move declared himself the victor. i only managed to sneak back into the house at dawn, where my old man caught me trying and failing not to track mud up the stairs. he grounded me for a month but hibari’s parents didn’t even notice he’d been gone, and at night he would come over and throw these pebbles which rattled like hailstones off my window, so i knew to open it to hear his voice. i like the way this story ends, but when i tell him that he just scowls at me. ‘it’s not over yet,’ he says, petulantly, and sticks his chin in his hand. it makes me smile, ‘cause he’s right, it’s not over yet and there’s no end to this story. it’s _our_ story, and it’ll continue for as long it can, for as long as it has to.

y’know, this old desert road with the tumbleweeds and the stray cactus still-life is my favorite kind of highway. here i sit, easing the pedal to the floor and watching the needle on the speedometer creep a millimeter over sixty. next to me hibari is fingering the red welt on his knee which beads blood where he’d scraped it raw on the fender, already half scabbed over with a scar the color of rust. we make a pit stop at gokudera’s place, five miles north of palm springs and right on the outskirts of town. when gokudera was a kid, he lived with his dad, but then with one thing or another he ended up pitching a fit and ran away from home to bunk in with his half-sister for a couple of years. and now he lives on his own, with this ugly and possibly mentally-deficient cat that he nonetheless whole-heartedly adores, in this run-down little shack that is more a home to him than anywhere else in the world. when we show up at his doorstep he provides beer and sandwiches for refreshment, plus fresh water for the road, and then sends us on our way. ‘where are you going?’ he asks me, through the rolled-down window, as i start up the truck. ‘don’t know,’ i tell him. and he laughs like i’m crazy, but it’s the plain truth. we’re not going anywhere in particular; we’re just going. we’re going until we can’t go anymore, and maybe then we’ll think about stopping.

when we were kids and all lived in the same neighborhood, we spent a lot of time at tsuna’s house, just two streets over from my place. his mom used to make these amazing muffins that were studded with chocolate chips, and i would stuff my cheeks like a hamster before we all streamed outside and fought over who got to use the tire swing first. back then hibari and i weren’t so tight, no; if you ask me, i think he kind of resented everyone, just a little bit. me for my relationship with my dad, tsuna for his relationship with his mom, and gokudera for being the same as him, but not, well, dealing with it in exactly the same way that he dealt with it. he used to stand over on the side of the yard, both sticky arms folded across his chest like he was above it all, and privately gokudera would ask the rest of us why hibari even bothered coming over to begin with. but i knew, i could see why, even if nobody else could; you see... it was because he _wanted_ to be there. it was as simple as that.

and it amazed me—it _still_ amazes me—that it was _me_ he chose and not some other lucky schmuck, some other idiot who’d once streaked naked through the school canteen on a dare and been suspended for a week, or who had stood right at the edge of the school roof and pissed onto the principal’s car just for the hell of it. lying here next to hibari, on a tarp in the back of the truck, counting the freckles on his right arm by starlight and listening to his sleepy nonsense murmurs, i can hardly believe my luck -- it’s something fragile, half-imagined; like a soap bubble that’ll pop if you look right at it. neither of us fall asleep till the sky is already lightening, the clouds swirling purple and pink in slow-motion across my eyes. i remember the first time we kissed as clearly as though it’d happened just yesterday. it’s something i will never forget; how the sunlight streaming through the dusty window stained everything it touched a disconsolate yellow, how hibari’s cd player skipped like a heartbeat, how his mouth was warm and just a little dry on the outside, cool and sweet on the inside from the juice he’d been drinking since morning and how the first touch of his lips made everything new again.

a hour or two later, following up on the threat that the low-hanging clouds have been carrying for days, it rains at last. a few cloudy drops on the windshield turns torrential in the blink of an eye; i pull over by the side of the road to watch it come down in sheets, relentless, a grey curtain of precipitation dragged over parched land. from his pocket hibari extracts this soggy packet of cigarettes that he must’ve picked up, sneakily, in the last town we passed through, plus a bic lighter, and when i see this i ask, ‘aren’t you quitting?’ ‘just one for the road,’ he says, but i know why he’s doing it; it’s just one of his quirks, a stubborn habit he can’t quite kick. ‘rainy days are the best for smoking,’ he’d told me once, as an aside, and i am glad, maybe inordinately so, that i have the privilege of knowing this about him, another secret to hold to my heart. i lean over to switch off the radio, and then all we can hear is the steady white noise of rainfall. out of the corner of my eye i watch him struggling with the cigarette lighter, the damp cigarette dangling from his mouth, and i feel something bubbling up inside of me, i can’t put a stop to it; suddenly, i am thinking to myself, yes, i want this, all of this, hibari and his cigarettes in the rain, my old man’s faithful pickup truck, all of it, wet earth spinning underneath the stuck tires, smoke suspended in the air like a rotten haze and hibari, hibari, _hibari—_ anchoring me to the ground like the other half of me, holding my soul in the palm of his hand.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated!


End file.
